JOSEP MARIA CODINA

recent works

7 · 6 · 2018 - 22 · 9 · 2018

Opening: June 7th at 7.30 p.m.
Exhibition: June 8th - July 27th 2018

EXTENDED: Until september 22nd (August - closed)

The sixth personal exhibition at the gallery of the artist from Mataró, coincides with his sixtieth anniversary.

The recent works presented in the exhibition go through the artistic line that Codina has continued to develop in recent years. Characterized by the use of graphite and acrylic on canvas and paper he now adds more spontaneous gestural interventions. The thread of this series and the narrative approach of the works began with an unexpected finding of the artist at the Encants fleamarket: a letter written in 1940 that speaks about pain, rescue and consolation.

As Codina himself affirms: “The Experience of pain expressed in «The Descent of the Cross» by the Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden is in dialogue with the discovery of the letter written 500 years later. In the letter I found in "Els Encants" and dated one year after the end of the Spanish Civil War, a man tells his friend, the father of a dead young, that he proceeded to bury the son’s remains in a safe place: his family niche. This fact, completely decontextualized, offers a point of convergence with the work of the Flemish painter, concerning the idea of pain and consolation. "

Considering this, the great triptych in exhibition becomes its narrative core for its function of monumental altarpiece where the elements of Codina's work –  folds, spots, geometric lines – reinterpret a lyrical drama proper of sacred scenes.

The communicative power of the letter, which will be on display, has pushed the artist to resume the gesture of writing in a series where regular and repetitive pen strokes are converted into script-mandalas between communication and visualization.